They're coming to get you Barbara.

It's pretty obvious there's some google-bombing going on when the quality of political news articles at the top of the page has dropped so dramatically over the last few weeks. This piece is a perfect example: "Are Democrats too cocky?"

It's got all of the usual conservative bugaboos:

• Speaker Pelosi? Check.
• Barney Frank? Check.
• Incoherent Democratic agenda? Check.
• Higher taxes, more abortions and communism run large? Check.
• Terrorists winning? Check.

Sam Seder's recently taken to inviting John Amato from Crooks and Liars onto his show where John will play clips of Republican politicians making any of the above statements during debates and getting literally laughed at. It's really enjoyable to hear some Republican congressman get pissy because the crowd thinks his claim that they had a "robust response to Katrina" is hysterical.

Still I have to wonder about the backwashers like the author of the above article that still hold on to the delusions for dear life. I'll admit that there's a certain part of me that holds a certain respect for their certainty in the face of, well, objective reality. On the other hand I realize that should the Democrats meet conventional wisdom and eke out a victory the conservative dead-enders won't just go quietly into the night. They just have way too much invested in the delusion.

"Fascinating" is a word I use for the unexpected. "Interesting" shall suffice here.

I heard Sam Seder quote a statistic during the "Majority Report" on the number of subpoenas issued the Clinton administration vs. those issued the Bush administration by congressional oversight committees and simply couldn't believe it. So I looked it up and found this article from The Boston Globe entitled "Congress Reduces it's Oversight Role" from November of 2005.

But the agenda was different during the Clinton administration. The government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,052 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997 to 2002, and only 11 subpoenas related to allegations of Republican abuse.

Notice the writers parse the comparisons by using the term "Republican abuse" instead of "Bush administration" abuse. One can only assume they aren't comparing the number of subpoenas between the two adminstrations because there were no subpoenas issued to the Bush administration during that time period.

Fascinating.

Er, I mean interesting.